Mobile communication devices are becoming increasingly common and are used in many environments. Accordingly, individuals often keep them on their person throughout large portions of the day. In part, the ubiquity of mobile communication devices arises because such devices are often capable of performing many different functions. For instance, mobile communication devices may support any of a variety of applications, such as a telephone application, a video conferencing application, an e-mail application, an instant messaging application, a blogging application, a digital camera application, a digital video camera application, a web browsing application, a digital music player application, and/or a digital video player application, and so on.
One problem with the ubiquity of these devices in on many different environments is that the level of ambient noise can vary dramatically from environment to environment, sometimes making it difficult to get the user's attention when an incoming call, text, email or the like is received. For example, there is generally a high level of ambient noise at a concert or sporting event and a lower level of ambient noise when the user is asleep. It is thus generally more difficult to get the user's attention in the former environment than in the latter environment for a given ringer volume. In some cases this problem can be addressed by the providing the mobile communication device with various profiles from which the user can choose. For instance, the user may be able to select from among normal, outdoor, quiet and noisy profiles, each of which determines a different combination of phone settings such as ringer volume, ringtone or haptic feedback intensity level. In this approach the user manually selects a different profile when moving from one environment to another, but this can become a nuisance and users can often forget to change the profile over the course of a day.